disintegration

I’ve been thinking about disintegration,

lately, how peaceful it seems,

how natural, fit to scald my unworthiness. 

Every day a little bit of dying,

a renewal, heavenly cycle — strange

that something so divine could be

so intransmutably earthly. 

Decomposition, holy rot, what will my ancestors 

make of my tortured frame?

when we are reunited as dirt

and lonely viscerae? Am I worthy

of this life and death beyond death?

I walk and in my daydreams

every fallen leaf is gilded,

litter and scrub and ambrosia turning

to mushrooms that kill and mock living dreams. 

I walk and shed myself,

in layers, into the acid moss. 

Let it swallow me whole. 

Disintegration, decomposition, we

are falling apart. Turning to prayer. 

Were not the stars something greater,

once? Are we not their children?

Life cycles — we are eaten

by the fish and the hallowed ground,

and new life grows from our ashes,

fighting, always fighting against death 

and all its courtesans, losing, always losing,

for our entire Earth is haunted,

and when we walk we walk on bones. 

Disintegration, is it madness

to suddenly see the invisible thread?

I have been many corpses and crushed pearls, 

the same, the same. How long

until I no longer make sense? Until I 

lose myself? Am I

the sunset? What will I become?

When this life is done will I hurt?

And now, bleeding as I am,

is it time for repentance? I want to be prayer

or climbing vines and have no children

born of me. Goodbyes burn painful 

but there is no loneliness in death

and I can be patient. And I am. 

I watch the leaves turn green and gold

and winter-black, watch them bloom

in pollen-haze, watch them crack like ribs

under the weight of snow. I watch 

and wait for my own undoing. 

I think it will be an awakening,

to become a part of something,

to have every part of me split and scattered,

teeth and ashes, bleeding like stars. 

I am patient and death is more patient than I. 

So how peaceful it seems, to me

and my weeping eyes, to lay down

and wait to become the world. 

~tuesday